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Past and Present: The Early History of Public Educationhttps://technicalcommunication.blog/2018/01/24/past-and-present-the-early-history-of-public-education/
https://technicalcommunication.blog/2018/01/24/past-and-present-the-early-history-of-public-education/#respondWed, 24 Jan 2018 19:25:56 +0000http://technicalcommunication.blog/?p=4642Continue reading Past and Present: The Early History of Public Education]]>American education reformers have discussed several problems with the modern public school system: excessive class sizes, age-based grade levels, curriculums focused on memorization instead of the development of skills, the rigidity of the school-year, and the uneven distribution of resources between public schools, charter schools, and private schools. Salman Khan and others have correctly argued that the methods of our schools no longer meet the needs of our society and have proposed numerous reforms. Khan Lab School, for example, has replaced age-based grades with “levels of independence” that measure how well students define, research, and solve academic problems on their own. The school evaluates its students using portfolios instead of graded exams, schedules twelve-month school-years, and demands mastery from its students before they can progress from one concept to another. I have written about the philosophy of Khan Lab School and the future of public education here, and I will now consider how the history of the American education system explains many of its perceived drawbacks.

The historian Johann Neem from Western Washington University has recently published Democracy’s Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America about the history of public education before the Civil War. Neem asserts that William Ellery Channing, Horace Mann, and other nineteenth-century reformers supported public schools because democratic societies could not survive without educated citizens. Mann, who served as the Secretary of Education for the state of Massachusetts, believed education not only helped Americans succeed within the workplace but also converted them into responsible members of their local and national communities (Neem 21-2). Reformers worried that the spread of private schools and non-profit academies, which used public resources, charged tuition, and resemble modern charter schools, would secure high-quality education for the wealthy but leave many of the poor behind. Public schools increased access to education and theoretically drew together Americans from different classes, races, ethnicities, and religions with the aim of reinforcing the bonds of the wider nation.

Of course, the reality of public schools never entirely realized the dreams of antebellum reformers. Catholics and other religious critics of the Protestant reformers who designed the curriculums of early public schools often started their own parochial schools instead of sending their children into hostile classrooms. African Americans and Native Americans also found themselves pushed into segregated schools with fewer resources than their all-white counterparts. More surprisingly for modern audiences, many of the innovations associated with the rising quality of public schools later became the problems at the center of twenty-first-century education reform. Public schools originally displaced non-profit academies because they did not charge fees, had standardized curriculums, and collected students from different backgrounds. Present-day charter schools and voucher programs partly reverse this trend and help low-income students pay for their own academically, religiously, and demographically customized educations with reduced government oversight.

Even age-based grade levels, the traditional school-year, and high student-to-teacher ratios actually improved the quality of American schools during the nineteenth century. Whereas Salman Khan has promoted collaboration between students and mastery-based education by eliminating grade levels from his “One World Schoolhouse,” antebellum reformers fought against one-room schoolhouses because teachers could not easily help their students learn and practice new content when their classes spanned every age and skill-level (Neem 121-2). Age-based grades helped make public school curriculums more systematic and shifted education away from rote memorization and recitation to analysis and critical-thinking, which remains one of the primary objectives of educators across the country. Larger class sizes made grade levels possible for districts with limited resources, and the modern school-year arose from the compromise between the farming needs of rural families and the compulsory attendance laws of the late-1800s. Although I hope public schools eventually try some of the methods of Khan Lab School, its classes have some similarities with the work of Joseph Lancaster (1778-1838), who had his older students lead younger students during school exercises and hired teachers to work as supervisors and periodic lecturers.

Our current public education system has significant flaws, and I wholeheartedly support the efforts of educators who believe new methods can produce meaningful results. We should not, however, assume that American public schools have always suffered from the same set of problems or that we cannot learn about the future of education from its past. If anything, the history of education proves that only continual exchanges between the theory, policy, and practice of public education can keep our schools effective and responsive for American students.

]]>https://technicalcommunication.blog/2018/01/24/past-and-present-the-early-history-of-public-education/feed/0alexparry1991Image result for "\the new england school paintingDo Charter Schools Improve Education? Comparing Charter Schools and Traditional Public Schoolshttps://technicalcommunication.blog/2017/02/28/do-charter-schools-improve-education-comparing-charter-schools-and-traditional-public-schools/
https://technicalcommunication.blog/2017/02/28/do-charter-schools-improve-education-comparing-charter-schools-and-traditional-public-schools/#respondTue, 28 Feb 2017 21:06:40 +0000http://technicalcommunication.blog/?p=4403Continue reading Do Charter Schools Improve Education? Comparing Charter Schools and Traditional Public Schools]]>Americans have worried about the performance of our public schools for decades, and the charter school movement arose during the 1990s when some education reformers decided that government regulations kept traditional public schools from changing their policies and curriculums, streamlining their budgets, and holding themselves accountable for student performance. While traditional public schools operate under the control of local school boards, charter schools receive renewable contracts from cities, states, and nonprofits and usually stay open if their students meet state standards and pass national standardized tests at acceptable rates. Since the first charter schools opened thirty years ago, their visibility and popularity have increased dramatically; between 2000-2001 and 2015-2016, the number of students who attend charter schools nationwide has increased from 400,000 students to 2.9 million, and this population has grown about 10-15% every year since the mid-2000s. While advocates of charter schools claim that these programs save money and improve student outcomes compared with traditional public schools, the opponents of the charter movement question the academic benefits of charter schools and underscore how much stress charters place upon local school districts. Charter schools still only work with about 5-6% of all American students, but Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos clearly believes charter schools and voucher programs represent the future of American education. We must accordingly examine how well charter schools perform compared with public schools and whether their potential drawbacks make them a distraction from more-useful education reforms.

The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University released its second comprehensive study comparing charter schools and traditional public schools with similar demographics in 2013, and the study produced three main results: 1) Charter schools have improved significantly since the first CREDO study from 2009. 2) Traditional public schools and charter schools provide nearly the same amount of academic growth for their students. 3) Charter schools have the most success with poor African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans, English-Language Learners, and students from all backgrounds who need special education services. When CREDO published its 2009 study, traditional public schools outperformed charter schools for Math and Reading across every social, economic, and racial category. The students who attended charter schools received the equivalent of seven fewer days of Reading instruction and twenty-two fewer days of Math instruction than their traditional public school counterparts. The 2013 study, however, concluded that students from charter schools had eight more days of Reading growth than students from traditional public schools and the same average Math performance. Overall, charters and traditional public schools currently provide about the same quality of education for their students, but charter schools have disproportionate benefits for demographics that public schools often leave behind (see chart below).

When we compare charter schools and traditional public schools from the same regions, we similarly find that 56% of charter schools have the same performance as traditional public schools for Reading while 25% perform noticeably better and another 19% perform significantly worse. Charter schools and traditional public schools are equally successful for Math, where 40% have the same performance, 29% perform significantly better than public schools and 31% perform significantly worse. Unfortunately, the similar achievement of charter schools and traditional public schools provides useful evidence for proponents and detractors of charter schools alike. Supporters of the charter movement rightfully assert that charter schools have already reached the academic performance of traditional public schools and firmly believe these schools will continue improving over time. Detractors, conversely, ask why education reformers have spent so much effort and money on charter schools that have not meaningfully improved American education. In fact, recent studies which have compared traditional public schools with charter schools without removing better-funded (and predominantly white) suburban schools from their data-sets have found that traditional public schools still slightly outperform charter schools nationwide.

So the question remains: do charter schools improve education? If not, will they improve our school systems eventually if they receive more time and resources? While I personally believe policymakers should wait another few years and then make their final assessments based upon the next set of CREDO results, we should remember that charter schools have direct competitive advantages over traditional public schools and multiple drawbacks beyond the central problem of student achievement. First, charter schools have smaller class sizes and student populations than traditional public schools, and these secondary variables positively affect student performance (see table below). Second, charter schools do not admit students after the start of the school-year and can require outside support from the parents of their students. Finally, charter schools have fewer curriculum restrictions than other public schools, which provides their instructors with more opportunities for innovation. Charter schools may have improved significantly over time, but these advantages mean that some of their success may not arise from the categorical effectiveness of charter schools themselves.

Figure 3. Percentage of Classrooms with Different Sizes for Charter Schools and Traditional Public Schools (Source: Chudowsky and Ginsburg)

Recent reports have also raised the problem of how traditional school districts can teach their own students while their revenues decline from reduced enrollment. While public schools have started the transition towards leaner budgets, the fixed costs associated with pensions for retired teachers, school facilities, and higher instructor salaries mean they cannot make the necessary cuts without further reducing their budgets for academic and extracurricular programs. This pushes even more students out of traditional schools and into the charter system, which gradually weakens the entire school district. Some states have eased this burden with reimbursement programs where local charter schools help fund district pensions and with temporary subsidies that help traditional public schools downsize, but most of these policies have received limited financial and political support. Most Americans still attend traditional public schools, and the vicious cycle of reduced enrollment, less money for student programs, and mass relocation into charter schools could have significant consequences within the next ten-fifteen years. Furthermore, if the government continues to support charter schools at the expense of public schools, then students from rural areas may not have access to schools near their hometowns. Perhaps the only one-sided conclusion I have drawn from current research into charter schools is the wholesale failure of digital charter schools: CREDO published another report last year showing that students from online charter schools receive the equivalent of 72 fewer days of Math instruction and 180 fewer days of Reading instruction than students from other public schools using the standard 180-day school-year. Despite the support of Secretary DeVos for online charters, these schools clearly do not benefit their students and should become immediate targets for reform or closure.

Whether or not charter schools should become significant parts of the future of American education depends on whether they can demonstrate continued improvement beyond the performance of traditional public schools, how well this policy solution will scale once the charter system serves higher numbers of students, and the short-term and long-term effects of charter schools on district budgets. The path forward should likely involve the following: 1) State governments should close the bottom 10% of all charter schools, which could increase the achievement of charter students for Math and Reading the equivalent of about fifteen days of learning. 2) Researchers should confirm the consensus among education researchers that students from charter schools and traditional public schools currently show similar academic growth and reevaluate these results within the next few years. If charters cannot surpass other public schools collectively, then the state and federal governments should devote their time and resources towards other education reforms including flipped classrooms, project-based learning, and student-directed study (my previous post about Salman Khan discusses these options). 3) State and local governments should help schools districts make the budget cuts associated with reduced enrollment so that they will not need to divert resources away from current students. Charter schools will not solve all of the problems with American education, but recent evidence shows they can help our students if we think critically about their costs and benefits.

]]>https://technicalcommunication.blog/2017/02/28/do-charter-schools-improve-education-comparing-charter-schools-and-traditional-public-schools/feed/0alexparry1991Image result for charter schoolsstudent-outcomes-by-demographiccharter-school-performanceclass-sizesKhan Academy, Khan Lab School, and the Future of Educationhttps://technicalcommunication.blog/2017/02/11/khan-academy-khan-lab-school-and-the-future-of-education/
https://technicalcommunication.blog/2017/02/11/khan-academy-khan-lab-school-and-the-future-of-education/#commentsSat, 11 Feb 2017 07:32:53 +0000http://technicalcommunication.blog/?p=3997Continue reading Khan Academy, Khan Lab School, and the Future of Education]]>Last fall, I spoke with one of my former English teachers about her work with Khan Lab School, the experimental Bay Area campus founded using the philosophy of Salman Khan. I have finally read Khan’s book The One World Schoolhouse, which describes the main problems with the American education system, the potential solutions Khan himself has drawn from the success of Khan Academy, and his vision for the future of K-12 and higher education. While I have some reservations about the proposals from the book and hope I can eventually tour Khan Lab School itself, I respect how clearly Khan explains the drawbacks of the traditional assembly-line model of education and the logic behind his proposed alternatives. Whether or not his One World Schoolhouse will become reality over the next few decades seems beside the point: Khan helps us articulate which parts of our education system cause so much frustration among students and educators alike and challenges our fundamental assumptions about the structure, methods, and objectives of the classroom.

Khan lists multiple problems with conventional schools, but most of his criticisms stem from four root causes: classes usually involve lectures where the instructor summarizes material and the students listen passively, every student must learn the material at the same pace or change “tracks” (accelerated, standard, or remedial), schools organize all content into disconnected subjects, and school and state assessments accept less than mastery for passing grades. Khan cites literature from education researchers showing that most students can only process fifteen-twenty minutes of lecture before they lose focus and asks why instructors dedicate most of their time towards delivering content instead of hosting discussions, helping students solve relevant problems, and producing self-directed projects. He similarly asks why schools must partition material using time rather than mastery and compellingly argues that the pace of learning does not always correlate with its depth and durability; students who spend more time becoming comfortable with new content may have more potential than their faster peers. Indeed, Khan recognizes that students will often have different paces for different concepts, and the student who quickly grasps fractions may still have difficulty with geometry. Khan also criticizes the separation of knowledge into subjects, which not only breaks down the logical connections between literature and history, calculus and physics, biology and probability, but also prevents students from learning the complex problem-solving skills required for the twenty-first-century workforce.

Khan correspondingly promotes flipped courses where students watch lectures outside of the classroom at their own pace and work on exercises and projects during school with assistance from their teachers. These classes, Khan claims, should require mastery from their students (he uses the heuristic of correctly answering ten consecutive questions without making any mistakes) before they let their students move on to other subjects but does not rigidly prescribe the order for each lesson. Khan believes self-directed learning can address some of the most significant problems with American students: if students choose the subjects they study and the projects where they apply what they have learned, then they will hopefully assume direct ownership over their own educations, practice critical-thinking, and become familiar with interdisciplinary collaboration. While this framework may seem unrealistic, Khan provides evidence of its success from the pilot programs he has conducted with the nonprofit Peninsula Bridge and the Los Altos school district. Khan shows that his Los Altos pilot improved the percentage of students who placed at or above grade level for Math from 91% to 96% and improved the average scores of students from “lower-level” classes around 106% (Khan 167-8). Despite the relatively small sample-size of the pilot program, the results are undeniably promising, particularly for the unfortunate students who are placed into remedial programs and slowly left behind.

Khan himself has removed grade-levels altogether from Khan Lab School and has started to realize his vision with classes where students choose their own programs of study and devote much of their time towards synthetic projects instead of conventional exams. The Khan Lab School tracks the progress of its students using levels of academic independence rather than ages, and the curriculum includes English, Math, Computer Programming, Science, World Languages, and Wellness. Khan Lab School extends the increasingly popular system of portfolio-based learning into primary education, letting students become active problem-solvers instead of passive recipients of facts and equations. Of course, Khan Lab School still has some hurdles it must overcome for its current and future students if it hopes to become a model for other public and private schools. First, how seamlessly will students from Khan Lab School transition into other institutions for high-school and college? Will admissions committees accept portfolios instead of traditional grades for former Khan Lab students, and how can other teachers account for the individualized knowledge of these students? How can underfunded and overtaxed public schools adopt the methods of the Khan Lab School, and how would specific districts retrain their teachers and restructure their previous curriculums? What, if anything, should we save from our current school-system? Khan Lab School exists to answer many of these questions, and fear of potential failures cannot excuse the lack of experimentation responsible for the current state of American education. I wish Khan, my English teacher, and the rest of the Khan Lab and Khan Academy staff the best of luck.

]]>https://technicalcommunication.blog/2017/02/11/khan-academy-khan-lab-school-and-the-future-of-education/feed/5alexparry1991Do Immigrants Cause Crime? The Facts of the Swedish “Refugee Crisis”https://technicalcommunication.blog/2017/02/06/do-immigrants-cause-crime-the-facts-of-the-swedish-refugee-crisis/
https://technicalcommunication.blog/2017/02/06/do-immigrants-cause-crime-the-facts-of-the-swedish-refugee-crisis/#respondMon, 06 Feb 2017 07:39:21 +0000http://alexanderianparry.wordpress.com/?p=3705Continue reading Do Immigrants Cause Crime? The Facts of the Swedish “Refugee Crisis”]]>Since President Trump released his recently-suspended executive order against the entry of Middle-Eastern travelers and Syrian refugees into the United States, many Americans have cited the reported increase of violent crime across Sweden to defend the policy and the hostility of the Trump administration towards immigration. Conservative think-tanks and news sources, including the Gatestone Institute, the Express, the Daily Caller, and Breitbart, have asserted that countries with Middle-Eastern immigrants have unusually-high crime rates because foreigners, particularly refugees, commit crimes at much higher rates than native-born citizens. These news outlets frequently reference a sudden rise of the crime rate of Sweden over the past two years to prove that its relatively permissive immigration policies have placed the entire country at risk. Reports from Gatestone, the Express, and Russian national media outlets have even claimed that some neighborhoods in Sweden have become “no-go” zones where law and order has completely collapsed. While cursory research shows that the Swedish organization supposedly responsible for the secret report documenting these “no-go” zones, the National Criminal Investigation Service, does not exist, the question remains: has Sweden experienced abnormally high crime-rates over the past two years because of its admission of Middle-Eastern immigrants?

If we consult Swedish crime statistics from 2014-2016, the answer is probably not. The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention has released preliminary data that show that the number of reported crimes decreased from 2014 to 2015 and then rose slightly from 2015 to 2016. Overall, the crime rate and the frequency of violent crimes have actually fallen from 2014 to 2016 during the peak of the supposed “refugee crisis.” For example, 6,700 cases of rape were reported in Sweden during 2014 compared with 5,920 in 2015 and 6,560 in 2016. Despite the publicized increase of the overall crime rate, the entire country only experienced 6,500 more crimes in 2016 than in 2015 out of 1.5 million crimes total (an increase of less than half of one percent). If we examine long-term figures from the Swedish Crime Survey, the murder rate has remained steady between 2-4 cases per 100,000 citizens since 2000 (the highest rate, ironically, appears for the year 2010). Since the middle of the twentieth century, the number of convictions for all crimes across Sweden has decreased significantly, from 300,000 during the 1970s to 110,000-130,000 during the 2000s. The only violent crime with any evidence of an increase over time is rape, an offense that the Swedish government has redefined since 2005 to include not only physical sexual assault but also sexual harassment and unwanted gestures and glances. Sweden now records every separate instance of harassment as its own count of rape, which makes its national rape figures higher than some other European countries (if an offender makes one sexual comment every day for a month, for example, he or she may be prosecuted for thirty counts of rape). Reports clearly show that Sweden has not experienced any short-term or long-term crime increase because of its immigration policies.

Nevertheless, we might fairly ask whether the crimes that the Swedish population does commit result primarily from native-born citizens with Swedish parents or immigrants born inside or outside of the country. Now we can review the statistics from the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, which breaks down all reported crimes using the national demographics of the suspect. The report covers 1997-2001 and summarizes its results for English readers, and the results display some relevant trends. First, the report does show a direct correlation between immigration status and criminal activity: Swedes with two foreign-born parents and those born outside Sweden commit crimes roughly 2.0 and 2.5 times more frequently than Swedes with two native parents. This statistic, one of the only credible pieces of evidence for the immigration-crime link, overlooks some critical variables. Once we correct for the fact that most foreign immigrants are adolescent men with below-average incomes (men and the poor have higher crime rates than women and the wealthy), we discover these same groups are only 1.5 and 2.1 times more likely to commit a crime than native Swedes. This normalized data, however, still does not account for the lower number of socioeconomic opportunities for immigrants, who must learn the Swedish language before they can seek employment and live within specially-designated communities. The NCCP study also exclusively covers reported crimes, which biases the results even further against minorities (consider the disparity between the number of arrests for black and white drug users within the United States despite their comparable addiction rates). The “immigration crisis” becomes even more suspect when we measure the claims of reactionary media outlets with reality; while many sources assert immigrants from Islamic nations commit the vast majority of crimes in Sweden, foreign-born residents from predominantly-Muslim West Asia, South Central Asia, and Northern Africa account for only 7.1% of all reported crimes out of the 25.6% of crimes associated with Swedish residents born abroad. In fact, non-Swedish Europeans commit more crimes than immigrants from North Africa and the Middle-East combined at 12.9% of all reported crimes.

Sweden might still restrict its flow of immigrants for socioeconomic reasons. The Swedish government provides free education, food, and shelter for immigrants and refugees while they become part of Swedish society, and the communities where these immigrants live often have poor infrastructure. Ironically, most of the crime associated with immigrants happens within these under-resourced areas between marginalized populations, not from Muslims against white native Swedes. The case of Sweden provides little or no evidence of the disproportionate threat of Muslim immigrants from the Middle-East, and the way the United States handles immigration would resolve most of the problems that Sweden has experienced so far. The United States does not provide special welfare benefits for its immigrants, grants unrestricted freedom of movement for all of its residents, and only admits a small fraction of its total population into the country each year (less than .3%). We should think carefully before we use Sweden to rationalize our recent turn against legal immigrants and refugees, and we should ask ourselves what political motives support the misrepresentation of Swedish crime statistics. Whether the case of Sweden provides another example of “alternative facts” or reflects genuine confusion over the state of the country, we cannot dismiss the evidence that the crime rate for Sweden has not appreciably changed since the 1990s. As students, instructors, researchers, and American citizens, we cannot shy away from the responsibility to not only stay informed but also to critically evaluate the information we receive from those around us.

]]>https://technicalcommunication.blog/2017/02/06/do-immigrants-cause-crime-the-facts-of-the-swedish-refugee-crisis/feed/0alexparry1991Related imageThe Danger of Alternative Factshttps://technicalcommunication.blog/2017/02/01/the-danger-of-alternative-facts/
https://technicalcommunication.blog/2017/02/01/the-danger-of-alternative-facts/#commentsWed, 01 Feb 2017 20:57:45 +0000http://alexanderianparry.wordpress.com/?p=3502Continue reading The Danger of Alternative Facts]]>Over the past few weeks, supporters and opponents of the Trump administration have fought over the constitutionality of his immigration order, the appointment of Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education, and the size of the crowd at his inauguration. Whether we agree or disagree with these decisions, we should not let our politics overshadow the most worrisome result of the Trump administration: the presentation and circulation of “alternative facts.” Kellyanne Conway, the Counselor to the President, coined the term when she asserted that aerial photographs, public transportation records, and statistical estimates could not disprove the claim from White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer that more Americans attended the Trump inauguration than that of any other president. The possibility of “alternative facts” has become one of the primary defenses of the Trump administration, and many Americans who support President Trump believe the media has misrepresented facts with the explicit objective of undermining his actions. Those who have sided with Conway present two related arguments: 1) We cannot completely remove subjective biases from our perceptions of reality, so all facts contain some bias. 2) If facts cannot escape bias, then one set of “facts” cannot have any more validity than another set of “facts.” Therefore, what we consider the truth and the truth itself are more or less the same, and we can counter any fact with an “alternative fact” backed with any amount of evidence, research, or subjective belief.

Facts are not opinions. While we must acknowledge that facts cannot achieve complete objectivity because we can only perceive the world using our senses, this does not mean that we should consider facts and “alternative facts” equally valid. I recently came across an article from Scientific American titled “The Delusion of Alternative Facts” where two psychologists who study optical illusions clearly explain why “alternative facts” do not meet the standards of the facts they challenge and replace. First, we may not be able to prove that what we know is true, but we can prove that what we know is false. If we see two photographs of the same location side-by-side and see one event has more people than the other, then we cannot simply dismiss the available evidence and say we do not know which event had higher attendance. If we statistically determine that the annual homicide rate of the city of Philadelphia has fallen from 391 to 277 victims since 2007, then we cannot responsibly claim the murder rate for the city has increased. We can only disprove facts with more facts, not with speculations, and “alternative facts” change the framework for our evaluations from the comparison of different sets of evidence to how much we believe certain facts are true. No matter how much smokers believed cigarettes did not cause cancer during the early-mid 1900s, we now know otherwise because of the vast accumulation of evidence from laboratory experiments, statistical correlations, etc. We cannot change this reality even if we wish or assume that cigarettes do nothing except help us relax, and we now face the same wishful thinking while we convince the public of the health risks of secondhand smoke.

Evidence and belief fall into two separate categories, and we cannot measure what is or is not true based upon what we do or do not believe. We can (and often do) deny facts that contradict our worldview and accept falsehoods consistent with our personal biases, and “alternative facts” let us simply believe whatever reality we choose. If Congress confirms Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education, then her vocal support for voucher programs and her connections with opponents of climate-change science and evolution may cause the same problem. Families whose students attend voucher-funded parochial schools can withdraw from the facts of the scientific community while curriculum reforms approve pseudoscience and heavily-edited history courses for public schools. At the same time, federal officials, media outlets, and scientists have become increasingly divided over the content and even the reality of the gag order that President Trump has supposedly placed upon federal agencies including the National Park Service, the USDA, and the EPA. While the head of the EPA transition team has dismissed the accusation that Trump has silenced government researchers and assert that President Obama announced a similar media-control policy when he took office, scientists and staffers from the agencies have clarified that the Obama-era rule only applied for policy statements, not empirical research and publications. If we replace facts with “alternative facts,” then how will we accurately determine what our country needs and how our previous efforts have actually fared?

The problem of “alternative facts” matters equally for the right and the left, and we must not let what we think we know become our whole reality. We cannot move forward unless we can meaningfully evaluate the arguments and evidence around us, and all of us have a moral obligation to respect the theories, results, and verifiable conclusions that comprise our current, contingent knowledge of the political and natural worlds. Facts may change over time, but they can only change when they face sufficient contradictory evidence. Science and society can always replace facts with facts, but if we consciously replace facts with “alternative facts,” then we must accept the fate of a country where the public good becomes nothing but a question of political grandstanding and public opinion.

]]>https://technicalcommunication.blog/2017/02/01/the-danger-of-alternative-facts/feed/2alexparry1991Image result for trump and kellyanne conwayHow to Detect Bullshithttps://technicalcommunication.blog/2017/01/25/how-to-detect-academic-bullshit/
https://technicalcommunication.blog/2017/01/25/how-to-detect-academic-bullshit/#respondWed, 25 Jan 2017 21:34:51 +0000http://alexanderianparry.wordpress.com/?p=3339Continue reading How to Detect Bullshit]]>Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West, two professors from the University of Washington, have recently developed a course which teaches college students how they can recognize and challenge everyday bullshit. Fact-checking seems particularly relevant given our current political climate, and Bergstrom and West have focused their syllabus on the misuse of statistics and graphs which directly contradict empirical facts. When we hear outright lies from friends, family, elected representatives, advertisers, corporations, teachers, etc., we can normally uncover the truth with careful research. Bergstrom and West ask how much this situation changes when data itself becomes one of the basic means of warping reality. If scientists, politicians, news outlets, and spokespersons misrepresent and bury facts with rhetoric, statistics, and graphics, then we must consider when, how, and why others might manipulate us. Bergstrom and West themselves claim that bullshit does not end with news and politics: it enters academic journals, TED lectures, published books, and (perhaps most problematically) classrooms nationwide.

The course website includes specific case-studies of statistical bullshit, academic essays about the spread and detection of bullshit, and clear statements of purpose from its two architects. I highly recommend the site for instructors concerned with how well their students analyze evidence, and the cases from the website can spark useful discussions about why even 99% caffeine-free products still contain high doses of caffeine and why over $70 million of fraud should not end the national food stamp program. Students can then locate and discuss their own examples of popular and academic bullshit, and the authors of the course have requested more case-studies and articles for future versions of their syllabus. You can find the website here: Calling Bullshit Course Website.

This course and its materials raise serious questions about the relationship between facts, statistics, and reality. We often assume statistics and graphs are self-explanatory, yet the flood of numbers we collect and cite share the fundamental drawbacks of the words they complement and sometimes replace. Data changes with the addition and removal of analytical context, and we cannot trust graphics, tables, and statistics simply because they carry the authority of mathematics and the sciences. The problem of bullshit lies at the center of technical communication: when does the combination of carefully-selected methodologies, quantitative and qualitative results, and technical vocabulary help us secure accuracy and accountability, and when does it simply overwhelm its audiences with the appearance of credibility and objectivity? Why do we question words more than we evaluate numbers?

Before ending this post, I would like to thank everyone who has visited the website since my last article two months ago. I will hopefully resume my original schedule of one-two posts each week for the immediate future. I welcome your comments and any resources that seem appropriate for the site, and thank you again for your support.

]]>https://technicalcommunication.blog/2017/01/25/how-to-detect-academic-bullshit/feed/0alexparry1991Calling Bullshit.PNGWhy Effort Does Not Guarantee Successhttps://technicalcommunication.blog/2016/10/21/why-effort-does-not-guarantee-success/
https://technicalcommunication.blog/2016/10/21/why-effort-does-not-guarantee-success/#respondFri, 21 Oct 2016 21:50:57 +0000http://alexanderianparry.wordpress.com/?p=3004Continue reading Why Effort Does Not Guarantee Success]]>The most difficult conversations instructors have with their students normally involve their grades. I clearly remember one technical communication student who came into my office during the week before finals and asked how he could increase his current B into an A for his cumulative GPA. Hunched over my laptop so we could see the screen, we reviewed the grade-book for thirty minutes and eventually calculated that he could not raise his grade unless I waived two penalties that he had previously received for late assignments and scored 100% on his final project. Then the student abruptly changed his argument: instead of asking how he could improve his grade, the student claimed he simply “deserved” an A because of the time and energy he had put into the course. “Well, you won’t let me have an A,” he said, “so I guess my GPA is ruined.” He left my office without another word.

Students and professionals often believe their success depends only upon their effort. The student who visited my office assumed he could earn an A days before the end of the semester because he could still submit one more project; then he concluded his effort mattered more than his actual performance. Carol Dweck and other theorists have demonstrated how growth mindsets, where people associate their successes and failures with their actions instead of their innate abilities, improve how students learn and apply new skills and content-knowledge, but we cannot neglect the importance of results. Educators and executives can and should reward their students and employees for effort, but effort alone does not produce successful essays, lesson-plans, software, and business plans. Grade inflation and professional complacency have made us confuse effort with success and lowered the bars for satisfactory and exemplary work.

Success arises from three separate factors:

Effort: The time and commitment we devote towards our objectives.

Skill: The natural talents which help us achieve our objectives.

Experience: The relevant practice we can apply for our objectives.

If we define success using the academic and professional outcomes of any project, then success normally requires at least two of these factors. Consider the following example: my professor assigns a ten-page essay about the contemporary reception of The Origin of Species for my history-of-science class. If I barely spend any time on the project, cannot write clearly, and have minimal experience with academic research, then I will most likely fail the assignment. Even spending days on the project, having exceptional writing skills, or knowing the proper structure for historical essays may not fix the problem: the other two factors will outweigh the third. Without the benefit of skill or experience, my essay will improve with increased effort but probably will not receive an A.

When students reach college, they wonder why their grades suddenly decline after years of constant success. University professors expect results, and composition courses provide the point-of-entry for many students into the world of complex problems and uncertain solutions. Students who have only written summaries and persuasive essays during high-school are suddenly assigned research projects where they must process hundreds of pages of information and then write their own arguments about its significance. A few students meet these challenges because of the rigor of their high-school classes or their natural ability, but many others wonder why the same amount of effort suddenly yields poorer results. College not only increases the standards for success across every subject but also makes increasingly-frustrated students develop skills for which they have little prior experience. Whereas a professional carpenter can build a table without much effort, the average American can only build the same table with the perfect mixture of effort, talent, and detailed instructions.

Even the way companies hire employees subtly reflects the intersections of effort, skill, and experience. Google reportedly prefers candidates with clear motivation and generally-applicable skills with critical-thinking and communication because it assumes it can help its employees receive the specific experience required for their work later. Other companies carefully review the resumes of their applicants hoping they can find employees whose previous work experience matches their corporate objectives and the responsibilities of their available positions. If we accept common stereotypes about government agencies, many bureaucracies value personnel who have the abilities and expertise required for their jobs and downplay personal investment altogether. We must accept that effort does not guarantee success; it only provides the conditions where success becomes the most probable.

]]>https://technicalcommunication.blog/2016/10/21/why-effort-does-not-guarantee-success/feed/0alexparry1991Image result for sisyphusShould We Record K-12 Teachers While They Teach?https://technicalcommunication.blog/2016/09/20/should-we-record-k-12-teachers-while-they-teach/
https://technicalcommunication.blog/2016/09/20/should-we-record-k-12-teachers-while-they-teach/#commentsTue, 20 Sep 2016 19:07:27 +0000http://alexanderianparry.wordpress.com/?p=2938Continue reading Should We Record K-12 Teachers While They Teach?]]>Three years ago, Bill Gates delivered a ten-minute TED presentation about the lack of meaningful feedback teachers receive so they can improve their instruction. Gates believes other countries outperform the United States across every subject for K-12 education because the United States has no system for the development of entry-level teachers with high-quality models, mentors, and evidence of the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of their own practices. Gates offered a controversial solution: recording teachers across the country and evaluating their performance based upon student outcomes and the videos themselves. While Gates conceded this proposal would cost approximately $5 billion and would probably face immediate resistance from teachers and districts, he asserted the benefits of this program would significantly outweigh its costs. You can watch the entire presentation below:

The question remains: should we record our teachers, and how should we use the information collected from these videos? Gates and his supporters list several benefits of recorded lessons: these videos can help teachers recognize the relative success of their own lectures, activities, and classroom management procedures; share effective lessons and policies with their colleagues; produce databases of the best-practices of instructors nationwide; and identify teachers who deserve rewards for their work or need additional guidance and support. Nevertheless, this proposal has some potential drawbacks. First, continual video would significantly reduce the privacy of teachers and students during class. Second, if administrators used these videos for teacher evaluations, then districts would need regulations against “cherry-picking” positive or negative results for specific instructors. Finally, schools need resources so they can not only identify the limitations of their current methods but also incorporate technology, policies, and personnel whenever shortcomings are identified. Overall, I believe we should let teachers record themselves so they can improve their own instruction but feel we should approach any mandatory video system with caution.

]]>https://technicalcommunication.blog/2016/09/20/should-we-record-k-12-teachers-while-they-teach/feed/1alexparry1991Should Graduate Students Unionize?https://technicalcommunication.blog/2016/09/06/should-graduate-students-unionize-2/
https://technicalcommunication.blog/2016/09/06/should-graduate-students-unionize-2/#respondTue, 06 Sep 2016 06:43:03 +0000http://alexanderianparry.wordpress.com/?p=2936Continue reading Should Graduate Students Unionize?]]>Last month, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that graduate students from private universities could legally form unions (see this short article from the New York Times), and commentators have subsequently asked whether graduate students actually need protection from their institutions. Graduate students already receive fee and tuition waivers, stipends, and healthcare from their universities whereas medical and law students pay for their entire educations. Why, then, should graduate students complain about their labor conditions when many other students and employees at the university level potentially suffer from even more clear-cut exploitation?

The case for graduate student unionization follows two central principles: 1) Graduate students do not receive adequate compensation for their skilled academic labor. 2) The use of underpaid graduate students for college courses not only prevents universities from hiring tenured faculty but also lowers the wages of adjuncts and other nontenured instructors. Based upon personal experience, graduate students typically work over fifty hours per week and must divide their time between their own research (which will determine their long-term success) and their instructional responsibilities. Graduate students must therefore prioritize between their careers and their students whenever they manage their schedules, which inevitably weakens either their research programs or the curriculum and administration of their courses. While these trade-offs certainly apply for tenured professors, graduate students experience similar pressure from their departments for original research but generally receive less protection from campus administrators who expect well-designed classes from their instructors.

Furthermore, graduate students often receive stipends that neither cover their expenses nor reflect the number of hours they dedicate towards their students. Most graduate student assistantships provide compensation for twenty hours of work per week, yet most universities expect more lectures, assignments, handouts, feedback, office hours, etc. than twenty hours can actually produce. Graduate students must then decide between working without pay for their students and saving their time for additional employment opportunities and research. The graduate students I have met during my undergraduate and graduate careers have almost exclusively chosen the first option, and many of them teach far more than weekly sections. While most universities call their graduate student employees “assistants” for financial and political reasons, English departments commonly staff their first-year composition, upper-division technical communication, and literature classes with graduate students and adjuncts. I consider the teaching experience I received at the University of Oklahoma essential for my professional development, but I personally found the title “Graduate Student Assistant” disrespectful while independently planning and teaching college courses.

Of course, the compensation graduate students receive for their labor also affects other university employees; adjuncts often work more hours for less pay than their graduate student counterparts and do not receive the benefit of tuition waivers. I commend the University of Oklahoma English Department for recently hiring some of its adjuncts with renewable-term faculty contracts, which do not provide tenure but dramatically improve the payment and job-security of temporary English instructors. Graduate students and adjuncts nonetheless teach first-year composition and other general education courses across the country, and the low wages and excessive hours of each group worsens the labor conditions of the other. If campus administrations could not hire graduate students and adjuncts for heavily-impacted classes, then tuition costs would probably rise; however, additional tenure-track and renewable-term faculty could also increase the quality of university classes, the satisfaction of higher-education professionals, and the long-term stability of academia itself.

Although unionization would not solve these problems immediately, negotiations between graduate students, tenured faculty, and campus administrators could improve the labor conditions of graduate students and other university instructors. Colleges have increasingly modeled themselves after businesses, and perhaps graduate students should follow suit and realize they have become multiyear employees of the “corporate university.” This does not mean we should monetize education or let our students become our customers, but it does mean that graduate students cannot let universities pay them less than their market value because of the mere prospect of eventually receiving tenure-track positions. Graduate students can, and should, demand what they are worth, and unionization seems perfectly reasonable under the present circumstances.

I recently came across this NPR article (one of my former coworkers from OU posted the link using Facebook) about the cognitive differences between handwritten and electronic notes. The article summarizes the results of a recent study from two psychologists from Princeton and UCLA showing that handwritten notes significantly improve how well students synthesize complex information. Notes serve two primary functions: they help us process material while we write down critical details and later provide records of these details when we study for exams and translate face-to-face meetings into products and documents. The authors of the study believe that although electronic notes help students and professionals transcribe more content than handwritten notes, these verbatim records actually prevent note-takers from identifying the main ideas and possible applications of lectures, conversations, etc. Even having more electronic notes did not help most of the students from the study, who took short exams after hearing various Ted Talks; the students with handwritten notes received higher scores regardless of whether or not the two groups studied for the tests beforehand. Click the link below for more information: NPR Handwritten vs. Electronic Notes Article.

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